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The killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis has sparked another wave of national outrage over police brutality and violence. Protesters have taken to the streets, demanding an end to police violence, and some are even asking for police departments to be defunded or abolished altogether. On this episode, we explore what better policing could look like, and what role research and science might play in serious reform. We talk with experts about the effects police violence is having on Black Americans’ health — both mental and physical. It’s not only the actual violence — it’s also the constant fear of violence, and the fear of being stopped and arrested that’s causing stress and anxiety. We hear ideas for reform, along with how we can improve, or even reinvent, American policing.

America's latest oil boom began with a bang, literally, on Earth Day, 2010. That’s when an offshore oil rig owned by BP exploded, killing eleven workers and spilling nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. John Hofmeister, co-founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, was in Washington D.C. at the time.

“I remember hearing about the explosion and seeing flames coming off the platform from the TV that was nearby,” Hofmeister recalls. “And I said, oh not again.”

What did he mean by that? Hofmeister had been president of Shell Oil during both the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion and the Prudhoe Bay pipeline leaks in 2006. Both facilities were owned by BP at the time of the disasters.

“It just seems to me that something is deadly wrong inside that company,” Hofmeister remembers thinking.

Bill Reilly was on the board of Conoco Phillips at the time, and later co-chaired the commission that investigated the spill.

The more that we inquired into the circumstances that led to it,” Reilly says, “the more it was a case of not just one thing went wrong. A whole series of things went wrong.”

Tragic as it was, that 2010 event coincided with the start of a decade-long boom in U.S. oil production. That is largely due to the spread of fracking technology, helped along by administrations that have kept the cost of oil leases low. Today, the U.S. leads the world in oil production, surpassing both Russia and Saudi Arabia. But it hasn’t all been good news for the fossil fuel industry. A gradual global move away from coal and oil are threatening their bottom line. Not only that - the COVID-19 crisis has shown many Americans that reducing our commute - and our gasoline consumption - could be the wave of the future.

“CEOs always were of the opinion that working at home is not efficient; you couldn’t really trust people do it,” says Reilly. But that’s no longer the case. “They're astonished to see how well everything is going and how it's reduced costs…that could bode for significant decrease in consumption of fossil fuels.”

Climate change and environmental concerns have also led to pushback from regulators and some institutional investors. More and more, major oil companies are under pressure to be part of the solution, rather than the problem.

“We simply have to get what are called negative emissions,” Reilly adds. “The oil and gas industry, I think, is supremely qualified to have the scale, to have the engineers, to have this expertise, to undertake problems like that.”

But can this tiger change its stripes? Heather Richards, who follows the oil industry for Energy & Environment News, is not so sure.

“Even though [the oil and gas business] has expertise, I don't think it's necessarily quite as easy to shift this industry,” she says. “It's difficult I think from this seat to say with great confidence ‘we’re just gonna move into the offshore wind, we’ll just do that.’”

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In a passage from How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, Scott Newstok, a professor at Rhodes College, offers an apt description of class letting out and students wandering about while focused on their phones.

Caitlin calls from Laredo, Texas, to ask about the slang term for breakfast tacos popular there. Why are they called mariachis? In American Tacos: A History and Guide, Jose Ralat relates a story that links the name to a restaurant that prepared tacos spicy enough to make a person let loose with a grito typical of mariachi music.

A Minnesota listener wonders about a phrase her father always used: the juice was worth the squeeze, meaning the result was worth the effort. It's simply a reference to squeezing a piece of fruit. The musician Lizzo suggests a similar idea in her song "Juice," one of the tunes featured in her NPR Tiny Desk concert.

The Spanish phrase aburrido como una ostra or "as bored as an oyster" is an apt simile.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski's brain teaser features two- and three-word expressions that end with an ee sound. For example, what two-word title might apply to a song about a participation dance with a distinctive tune and lyric structure that reflects an unhealthy obsession with body parts?

John, a 10-year-old from Dallas, Texas, wonders why an unpredictable or uncontrollable person can be referred to as a loose cannon.

Victor Hugo's 1874 novel Ninety-Three includes a terrifying description of a heavy cannon coming loose on board a ship, an event he calls "perhaps the most dreadful thing that can take place at sea."

Caroline calls from Clinch Mountain, Tennessee to ask about two puzzling uses of the word fell, and not as in the past tense of fall. In books by J.R.R. Tolkien, she's seen fell used as an adjective meaning "dreadful" or "evil." It's the same fell in the phrase one fell swoop, originally the swift and merciless attack of a bird of prey. In the books of James Herriot, the word fell is sometimes used as a noun to denote a hill or other elevated feature of the landscape.

Greg in San Antonio, Texas, who works in the tech industry, says he and his co-workers use the phrase shaving yak hair to describe a monotonous, tedious task. The phrase was inspired by a 1991 segment of "The Ren and Stimpy Show," in which the title characters celebrate Yak Shaving Day, a bizarre holiday that involves hanging diapers, stuffing coleslaw into rubber boots, and of course, waiting for the shaven yak to float by.

In How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, Scott Newstok, a professor at Rhodes College, points out that William Shakespeare never had what we might think of as an "English class." Instead, he was taught rhetoric, disputation, critical thinking, and more -- all in Latin. Newstok says that creative thinking is a craft that can be taught, just like any other. He also points out that a playwright crafts plays, just as a boatwright crafts boats, a wheelwright crafts wheels, and a wainwright fashions wagons.

Quincy works as a delivery driver in San Diego, Calfornia. His wife's been teasing him that while she's stuck at home, his job lets him go out having fun, gallivanting, and "running into the strumpets." What, he wonders, is a strumpet?

Pickthank, now an archaic and literary term, denotes a sycophant who curries favor.

Mike calls from Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania to ask about the word picayune, meaning "petty." Why would a New Orleans newspaper call itself The Times-Picayune? The adjective picayune, meaning "trifling" or "insignificant," derives from French picaillon, the name of a small coin of little value. In the 19th century, when the newspaper was first established, it was sold for just a picayune, or around 6 cents.

Tricia in Chesapeake, Virginia, says if her father was annoyed with her mother, he used to jokingly tell her: Go sit on a tack! It's another way of saying "Leave me alone!" Similar phrases include go fly a kite, go climb a tree, go chase yourself, go run in traffic. Go sit on a tack is one of the more polite ones, and goes back at least to the 1880s. Etymologist Barry Popik has unearthed a joke that goes "What time is it when you sit on a tack? Springtime!"

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region.

This week, blast off with the Matchsellers’ “Bluegrastronauts,” the world’s first outer-space bluegrass odyssey, recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park. Mixing elements of tall tales, theater, science fiction and bluegrass, the Bluegrastonauts show isn’t quite like anything you’ve ever heard.

The Matchsellers are Warsaw, Indiana native Andrew Morris and Julie Bates of Kansas City, Missouri. Their exciting, gritty, and often hilarious stage show has been developed over six years of touring across the US and Europe. Performing at the Ozark Folk Center State Park, Andrew and Julie present their outer-space bluegrass odyssey with a four piece stringband, featuring Chad Graves of The Hillbenders on dobro, and Betsey Mae on bass. The group combines absurdity, authenticity, and excellent musicianship to create a performance that is representative of the present age: They are pleasantly stuck between the years gone by and those to come.

The Matchsellers’ Bluegrastronauts is old-time in outer space. It’s a far away galaxy as close as your first cousin. It’s a 100,000-mile-an-hour horse and buggy. Dressed as space travelers from the year 2437, the Matchsellers’ Bluegrastronauts take audiences through a musical “history of the future,” including a first-hand account of the Apocalypse of 2137, the subsequent colonization of the moon, and the dangers of playing hopscotch in deep space. The show reaches the heights of absurdity while confronting deeply humanist issues of love, disillusionment, and mortality. Prepare to travel through space and old-time with one of the most unique and ambitious acts in acoustic music today. - https://thematchsellers.com/bluegrastronauts-band/

In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1978 recording of mountain dulcimer master David Schnaufer performing the traditional tune “Red Haired Boy,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.

“If you came and didn’t have no money or didn’t have enough money he’d be like ‘don’t worry about it, go ahead’ he fed everybody. “ --Lynnell Blakemore

This week on our show, we remember David McAtee, killed by authorities in Louisville, KY amid this week’s violence surrounding protests of deadly policing in the black community.

And as the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 continues to rise, we give a second listen to a conversation with Amanda Nickey of Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, about changes in their emergency food services.

Legendary pastry chef Claudia Fleming gives us a crash-course in baking. We discuss her tried-and-true techniques, her all-time favorite desserts and her experience working at New York City’s Jams in the 1980s. Plus, reporter Alli Fam brings us the story of green crabs, an invasive species whose population is on the rise; Bianca Bosker walks us through the fascinating history of tablescaping; and we present a recipe for Thai street food at home.

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After the police killing of George Floyd, protests around the country have erupted, calling for an end to police brutality against Black Americans. Sociology professor Alex Vitale says it’s not enough to reform the police. Instead, we must actually defund police and essentially end policing. And: Justin Hansfordexplains why one popular reform known as community policing is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

News that life might exist or have existed on Mars or somewhere else in our universe excites many. But should we really be happy to hear that news? What are the philosophical implications of the possibility of extraterrestrial life? If life can blossom in our own cosmic backyard, then that means that the universe is most likely saturated with life forms. And if that’s the case, why haven’t we found any evidence of other civilizations? Is it because all civilizations are prone to suicidal destruction at a certain point in their development? If so, how might we avoid this fate? The Philosophers search for life with Paul Davies from Arizona State University, author of The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence.

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This episode opens with a special message about The Planetary Society’s response to recent news. In our regular coverage, we celebrate the successful launch and arrival of the Crew Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station. Then it’s off to Mars with planetary scientist Edgard Rivera-Valentin. A team led by Ed has learned that it may be safer for robots and humans to visit the Red Planet than was thought.

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On the show this week: Climate protection is on the agenda at talks in Bonn. But back home, who's really taking action? We visit a budding environmental movement in Poland's coal heartland and find out how an oil pipeline has pitched environmentalists against the Canadian president. Plus, solar power in Kenya and a cool solution to LA's urban heat problem.

Climate protection is on the agenda at talks in Bonn. But back home, who's really taking action? We visit a budding environmental movement in Poland's coal heartland and find out how an oil pipeline has pitched environmentalists against the Canadian president. Plus, solar power in Kenya and a cool solution to LA's urban heat problem.

Katowice: A coal town that wants to go green

The upcoming COP24 climate summit will be held in Katowice, deep in Poland's industrial and coal mining heartland. Its air quality is among the worst in Europe. But the town is trying to clean up its act. And if Katowice can go green, perhaps anywhere can.

Canada's First Nations vs. tar sands pipeline

Canadian President Justin Trudeau has been vocal about his commitment to climate protection. But now, he's coming to blows with environmentalists and the provincial government of British Columbia over a massive oil pipeline

Can reflective roads help LA keep its cool?

Los Angeles has the greatest density of cars in the US — and a massive network of roads. In summer the asphalt absorbs sunlight and heats up, warming the air above it, an effect that will be exacerbated by climate change. But cool paving could change all that.

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This week on the show: Off the beaten path -
We find out how coronavirus restrictions are driving change in cities — from the way urban dwellers get around, to how they think about food. We'll go foraging for edible plants in London, join a bike-riding lesson in Paris, and visit a backyard vegetable plot in Los Angeles.

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This week painter Tara Austin opens her new body of work "Boreal Ornament" in the George Morrison Gallery at the Duluth Art Institute. Along with Jonathan Herrera, Austin welcomes the public the opening on Thursday, May 10, with a reception and gallery talk from 6 - 9pm.

An MFA graduate from UW Madison, Minnesota native Austin brings the northland and Nordic traditions of rosemåling into her vibrant flora, patterned paintings. Listen for more about her process and inspirations and check her work on display at The Duluth Art Institute May 10-July 1.

This week painter Tara Austin opens her new body of work "Boreal Ornament" in the George Morrison Gallery at the Duluth Art Institute. Along with Jonathan Herrera, Austin welcomes the public the opening on Thursday, May 10, with a reception and gallery talk from 6 - 9pm.
An MFA graduate from UW Madison, Minnesota native Austin brings the northland and Nordic traditions of rosemåling into her vibrant flora, patterned paintings. Listen for more about her process and inspirations and check her work on display at The Duluth Art Institute May 10-July 1.

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We’re transfixed, all of us, looking at a collision of deadly viruses, racial hatred and a pandemic disease. Suddenly what commands attention is the black push-back, with a lot of white support, against an injustice system – sparked by yet another police killing of a helpless black man, 30 years down the video trail from Rodney King. What grips us is partly the video spectacle of cop cars burning last weekend, and mostly peaceful marches everywhere since then. It’s also this replay loop of documented brutality in the work of policemen, enforcing second-class citizenship in this endangered model democracy. The history piece is our focus, back to the abandonment of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The trouble in the land has roots in two centuries and more of slavery, we know, and also in the way slavery ended: in a horrible civil war and then a failed attempt to reimagine and rebuild a nation of free and equal people. That re-start, less familiar in my old textbooks, was called Reconstruction. It got pushed aside after a decade for what was called Redemption. Meaning: restoration of white planter power and forced Jim Crow subjection of the former slaves. This is our unfinished history, as in James Joyce’s most famous line: history as the nightmare from which we are still trying to awake. In the turmoil around the headline viruses – COVID-19 and racism – we have a sort of thought experiment this hour: is yet another Reconstruction what we need? Can we picture it?

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In this hour of Blue Dimensions, Frank Bey continues his comeback, begun in 2018, with a new release in 2020 "All My Dues Are Paid." Bey is a soulful blues singer originally from Georgia long based in the Philadelphia area, whose career was derailed years ago by some sort of still unclear turn of events regarding a recording with James Brown. After seventeen years of not performing, he returned to it with passion, and you'll hear some of that in this show with three very different selections from "All My Dues Are Paid." Also: pianist Alex Levin pays tribute to the great Wynton Kelly with a tribute piece on his album "A Sunday Kind Of Love." We'll also hear from Mr. Kelly himself from 1960, and from the other Wynton, named after Wynton Kelly, Wynton Marsalis, leading the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra in a tribute to Wayne Shorter, with Shorter himself joining the band too.

In this hour of Blue Dimensions, we are surprised to note that three jazz albums entitled "Presence" have come out in 2018, and we've decided to draw music from all three of them - - one from pianist Orrin Evans & The Captain Black Big Band, some high-energy stuff recorded in concert at two jazz clubs in Philadelphia, one from pianist Brad Whitely, a strong studio recording, and another live one, a double album from saxophonist and composer John Petrucelli with lots of strings and a scallop shell used as an instrument as well. Three engaging and very different albums, all called "Presence," coming up in this hour of Blue Dimensions.

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We train the microphone on one of today's most exciting conductors and on a brilliant young Russian singer: Paavo Järvi and Julia Lezhneva both perform and share their thoughts on this program from the festival Kissingen Summer.

Katie and Joe play songs that helped define rebellions and uprisings over the centuries as the Celtic nations sought justice and and end to tyranny. It's music that still resonates--especially today.

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetic expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses, they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, fears and hopes, the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement; it is the dogma of the few and not the faith of the multitude” — James Connolly, 1907

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(Air Dates: December 31 - January 8) On this week's archive episode of 12th Street Jump, we celebrate the music of Bucky Pizzarelli with Bucky himself and his long time music partner Ed Laub. We'll play a game of "So, What's Your Question" with Ed and talk to Bucky about what gives him the blues.

Public Radio's weekly jazz, blues and comedy jam, 12th STREET JUMP celebrates America's original art form, live from one of its birthplaces, 12th Street in Kansas City. That is where Basie tickled and ivories and Big Joe Turner shouted the blues. Each week, host Ebony Fondren offers up a lively hour of topical sketch comedy and some great live jazz and blues from the 12th STREET JUMP band (musical director Joe Cartright, along with Tyrone Clark on bass and Arnold Young on drums) and vocalist David Basse. Special guests join the fun every week down at the 12th Street Jump.

A weekly radio show featuring the best in classic and contemporary Latin Jazz music. Hosted by Tony Vasquez.This week edition is a special presentation on the Latin Jazz Flute.Featuring Latin /Latin Jazz flautists from the past and present who where a major forcein the historical continuum of the music.